Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!ucsd!sdcc6!loral!jlh
From: jlh@loral.UUCP (The Mad Merkin Hunter)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: How do you explain the obvious?
Message-ID: <1738@loral.UUCP>
Date: 26 Apr 88 20:08:17 GMT
Organization: Under the table
Lines: 21
Keywords: aaaarrgghhhh!

I seem to have inherited a program that is, ahem, not in good shape.
For example, there was a '#define OK 0' at the top of the code, and
some of the routines actually used it.  BUT, in addition to OK, it used 0,
FALSE, and NULL used interchangeably!  I couldn't believe it!
I mentioned that this was not a good thing to do and the response was "Why
not?  I know it's 0 because I set it to 0!".  I'm stumped.  To me the
answer is so obvious I can't think of anything better than "because".
So what do I tell this person?  Oh yeah, the rest of the program.  Well,
it took 2 weeks to convert it from microcrap C 4.0 to 5.0.  Lots of little
things, like version 4.0 evidently returns 0 (or NULL or FALSE or OK or
whatever) when the function didn't have an explicit 'return(0)' at the
bottom, but 5.0 correctly returns random numbers.  Is hari-kari still
honorable?


								Jim


-- 
Jim Harkins 
Loral Instrumentation, San Diego
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